


The Green Teacup

by TerresDeBrume



Series: Times Between Us [4]
Category: Saint Seiya
Genre: Aka I take a lot of liberties with canon, Artistic Liberties, Bitterness, Child Soldiers, Dysfunctional Relationships, Everyone Has Issues, Everyone Is Alive, Except they're all grown up and bitter, Gen, Misgendering, Other: See Story Notes, Past Abuse, Past Homophobic Assault, Past Murder, Swearing, The Sanctuary's A+ child raising techniques
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 02:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8428528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: Aphrodite, after a week-long absence, is finally back in the Sanctuary, which means Deathmask can just yell at him for leaving everyone behind and let things go back to normal.Except for the part where they don’t.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **Additional waring:** As of _Princesses come in all form_ , TBU!Shun has been established as a trans woman, so when Deathmask refers to her with masculine pronouns, he's unknowingly misgendering her. It's not a huge part of the fic, but be cautious if it's the kind of things that upsets you :)

 

 

Aphrodite and the Incensed Asshole elude detection for a full week, during which Deathmask manages to fistfight half of his colleagues, finally kick Shura and his stupid goat helmet out of his life, and nearly destroy his temple in a fit of rage he’s almost impressed by.

 

When they do reappear, popping back into existence like champagne bursting open, Aphrodite’s cosmos is the only one that climbs up to the fourth temple—relief, joy, regret, apprehension wash over Deathmask in rapid succession, crash against his own cosmos, so thick with anger and resentment he could almost choke on it.

The rest of the Sanctuary vanishes under Patchouli’s cloying brand of calm assurance, overflows with the certitude that no one would reject the Holiest Bastard on Earth—Deathmask shoves hatred and bile against it until Patchouli retreats and the feel of him vanishes like perfume in the wind, makes room for Aphrodite’s startled cosmos as it comes nearer—bypasses the thick gathering of energies in the first temple and, in a shocking lack of self-preservation, follows the spiritual journey to Deathmask’s house with a physical one.

 

He waits in his private quarters at first—tries to figure out what will be most disturbing to Aphrodite and his oh-so-naive, delicate feelings. Sitting at the table like he hasn’t even noticed? Standing at the window with his back to the door? Outside the temple entirely, between the tombs he dug for the Cancer apprentices who never made it out of training?

 

(A memory: Anchise is just short of his eleventh birthday, and his master caught him talking to Aphrodite after they were both done with their chores. The entirety of him is sore with bruises and his ribs feel bad, like every step his master makes him take toward the graveyard jostles them about in places and positions they shouldn’t be able to assume.

 

“This is where the weaklings go,” his master tells him once they’re standing amidst the rows of nameless graves, “this is where this boy will take you.”

 

Years later, Aphrodite vanishes, and Deathmask understands.)

 

 

In the end, Deathmask decides he might as well rip the fucking fish a new one sooner rather than later and stalks out of his temple, mood so foul it brings the content feelings emanating from the Aries temple to a grinding halt—he smirks, satisfied. Weaknesses like this one have no place in the Sanctuary anyway. They’d do well to remember that.

He strides down the steps—bypasses the Gemini temple where Crackpot is keeping himself carefully out of sight—and catches Aphrodite with a right hook halfway to the Taurus temple.

 

Aphrodite flies into the nearby cliff, the dye-free mop of his golden curls filling with dust as he crashes into the white stone, loose shirt tearing against the jagged edges as he falls to the ground with a painful crash.

 

“You owe me a fucking week of dry toilets duty!” Deathmask shouts while Aphrodite groans and staggers to his feet, pathetically unpracticed.

 

Deathmask moves in for a second punch, but Aphrodite blocks him this time—twists around until he can seize Deathmask’s arm and throw him back to the ground much harder than strictly necessary. Aphrodite is already breathing hard when Deathmask gets to his feet—there’s blood on his cheek from where he forgot his armor, but he doesn’t care—and adds:

 

“Food, too, and my daily fucking tea!”

“Yeah,” Aphrodite shouts back through a rapidly-swelling mouth, “well you owe me two hundred years of being a stupid drunk! And snoring, and being a complete pain!”

 

Deathmask dodges an elbow to the ribs, twists Aphrodite’s left arm behind his back, and hisses:

 

“I’m not the one who fucking up and left!”

 

Aphrodite throws him off with a vicious hit in the shin and turns back to face him with a shout that borders on a shriek:

 

“All I wanted was to take a piss! It’s not my fault Shaka was carrying Chronos’ stupid Sand Clock!”

“Right,” Deathmask snarls, swiping Aphrodite’s legs from under him, “sure, blame it on Patchouli, that’s not pathetic at all!”

“Dammit Anchise,” Aphrodite sighs from his spot on the ground, wiping a tired hand across his face and grimacing when it comes out red and brown with blood and grime, “can’t you just admit you missed me and get it over with?”

“You’re a fucking disgrace,” Deathmask says instead of giving Aphrodite the beating he deserves for being so unashamedly pathetic.

 

Aphrodite snorts, wiping the blood that drips from his nose on his wrist, then winces when the pain catches up with him—he laughs then, the sound suspiciously close to a sob, and it’s a fucking shame really, shouldn’t even be tolerated in a Bronze Saint, let alone a Gold one, but Deathmask figures things are embarrassing enough as it is.

No need to add to it.

 

“I can’t believe I’m glad to be back,” Aphrodite says in the end, sitting up with a pained wince as he grins up at Deathmask.

“I always knew you were a a sentimental idiot.”

 

Aphrodite punches him in the shoulder—there’s no force behind it because he’s a fucking wimp—and staggers to his feet with a little pained sound and, really, Deathmask needs to drag him into the arena and beat that sound out of him before it takes a dive from embarrassing to outright shameful. Before he can say as much, though, Aphrodite makes some noise about wanting to see his place, and Deathmask swallows a grunt—he’s always hated the stupid trek to Aphrodite’s temple, but he guesses it’s an adequate punishment for failing to master teleportation, and he follows Aphrodite without protest.

 

Besides, let’s give credit where credit is due, Aphrodite didn’t even flinch at Deathmask’s cosmos, and the Gods know it’s made many a brave man tremble.

 

***

 

Deathmask wakes up the next morning with his cheek plastered to Aphrodite’s kitchen table, far too many empty bottles of various alcohols lying abandoned around him. Aphrodite, always disgustingly fresh and chipper after their nights of drinking, fiddles with his stove, the smell of burning wood and cooking rice filling the room with countless, blurred memories of sitting in this very spot and waiting for the first kettle of the day to come to a whistling boil.

Deathmask lets Aphrodite shove his teacup between his hands, and stares at the way it vanishes behind his fingers while he waits for important functions like speech to kick back into life and chase the zombified stare out of his eyes.

 

He’s not sure why he spent the night here this time—never really is, and he usually blames it on the alcohol, even though the more rational parts of his brain sometimes try to insist there must have been a reason why he decided to drink in the first place—but he does remember Aphrodite babbling on and on and on about the past two centuries and the things he saw, the places he went to, the people he met.

Deathmask, whose brain caught and tripped early on when Aphrodite mentioned being unable to use his cosmos, missed over half of it, but he heard enough to feel a little sick.

 

(A memory: Anchise is seven, maybe close to eight, and one of the older apprentices decided to make an example out of him—caught him by the foot, ready to gut him, and Anchise pants and strains for the knife he can see resting just beyond his reach, panics and flails while the others around him chant ‘die, die, die, die’, clapping their hands in rhythm. At the door, their master watches in silence, doesn’t move to help.

 

Anchise thinks of the way the Aries apprentices wave pebbles in the air with the sole strength of their mind—he stares at the knife, and reaches.)

 

Hearing that Aphrodite had to go through it all stuck with fucking Patchouli, of all people, is far easier to deal with—easier to dismiss, if nothing else, even though Deathmask knows it can’t have made anything easier.

 

“I’d have slit his throat on the first night,” he tells Aphrodite while the latter cracks two eggs in a skillet.

 

There’s a pause as Aphrodite connects that to yesterday’s conversation, chuckles, and says:

 

“I don’t doubt it. He grew better after the first couple of decades though.”

“Please,” Deathmask says, making sure to show his disdain in the one word, “it’s Patchouli.”

 

He frowns when that doesn’t get a laugh out of Aphrodite.

 

“I don’t know,” the other man says, “I haven’t called him that in a long time.”

 

Deathmask blinks, then gives a derisive snort—too late, too quiet—and drowns the sinking feeling of his stomach in a scorching cup of tea. Aphrodite looks at him with something bordering on fondness in his eyes, and the last dregs of Deathmask’s hangover vanish at the sight.

The new hair, the new clothes, the heavy tan—he noticed all of this yesterday, in less than a second. He’d have to have been blind or stupid to miss them, especially after they’ve made such a sudden appearance. There are new calluses on Aphrodite’s hands—always the roughest in the Sanctuary, despite his carefully maintained aesthetics—new scars peeking out from under his shirt’s sleeves. New stories too, like that time he almost got trampled by a moose—whatever that is—or nearly choked on a spicy plate—stories filled with the names and sounds of foreign places and foreign time and peppered with Shaka, Shaka, Shaka, like a new spice Deathmask has heard about but never tasted as if Patchouli, outside of his life, turned out to be a completely different being.

 

There’s a knife at Aphrodite’s belt that Shaka bought for him—the bone handle of it looks smooth, molded to his fingers, and his hand drifts to it every time the Cosmo-energies of their fellow Saint spike up, spurred by a nightmare, a bad memory, a threatening shadow on the wall—take your pick, really. Aphrodite has a new smile, too—one that hovers at the corner of his lips when he recalls something Shaka once did that sounds funny to him and leaves Deathmask behind, alone in a tiny kitchen that Aphrodite wants to remodel, whatever he means by that.

All of this—the new rigidity to Aphrodite’s spine, the way his gaze flickers from one exit to the next, the way he tilts his head toward every sudden noise, the gaping hole in his defense on the left side, where Deathmask isn’t—it’s pathetic and ridiculous and weak, and Deathmask ought to drag Aphrodite to the arena and beat some sense into him, pummel him until he stops leaving such obvious opening for the world to vanquish him—but Deathmask’s hands remain glued to his teacup long after they’ve emptied the last of the kettle, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth as if there was a risk Aphrodite would tear the cup away from him and send it flying into the wall.

 

Deathmask stares at the clumsy skull on the porcelain, lets the sound of Aphrodite’s voice wash over him as he drones on and on and on about one thing or another and, when he asks for help redoing his interior, Deathmask takes the time to wash his cup and set it back in its proper spot before he answers.

 

***

 

(A memory: Anchise is very small—maybe four or five—and the big man he’s not allowed to call daddy takes him out of the big dirty room where they live—away from the people who like to lie down on the mattresses next to them with poky things in their arms and big smiles on their faces—and into the streets. They walk fast and far and when night falls the big man says ‘stay here and I’ll bring you an ice cream’.

Anchise grins and stays and stays and stays, and the big man never comes back.

 

Three days after Aphrodite comes back, Deathmask sits alone in his temple thinking of ice cream for no fucking reason, and when Aphrodite finally appears with the risotto he promised to cook, Deathmask makes sure he knows exactly how unacceptable this kind of lateness is before they even settle down to eat.)

 

***

 

One week after Aphrodite and Patchouli come back from their time-traveling misadventures, Deathmask drags the Pisces Saint to the arena so they can ignore the temporary hold on training and drill Aphrodite back into shape, mostly because there are limits to Deathmask’s tolerance and the openings he sees in Aphrodite’s defense when they spar have crossed over it several time over. They’re in the middle of a round—Deathmask’s jaw all but dislocated with Aphrodite’s punch already—when a servant runs up to them, bent in half with terror as he stutters about a Sanctuary meeting happening that very afternoon.

Deathmask yells at him so hard he pisses his pants before he runs off.

 

Sanctuary meetings, in Deathmask’s opinion, rank high on the list of worst things ever created, second only to Saint Meetings. They’re kind of like Gold Meetings, where the Gold Saints are supposed to discuss and rearrange chores schedules, sort their shit out, and basically work together to make life around more bearable...except of course this is the Sanctuary they’re talking about, full of bullshit rules and resentments they’ve been nursing since the fucking birth of time. These things would suck productivity out of anything—endless hours spent doing nothing but snipping and snarking and grunting, every fucking Saint at each other’s throat metaphorically and literally, only to end up with the same fucking predictable results every fucking time, which is that nothing ever fucking changes here and they’ve all been wasting their fucking time and they still hate each other’s fucking guts except it’s worse because Sanctuary Meetings mean servants are required to attend too and honestly, nothing makes a dysfunctional unit crankier than witnesses.

The only reason Sanctuary Meetings are only second on the list of worst ideas humanity has ever had is because, after Athena pulled her little resurrection stunt on the Saints, Shion insisted to organize a Saints Meeting, during which they had to deal not only with the servants’ fucking stupidity but also with the fucking Bronze Saints and their fucking delusions of moral high ground, as if they hadn’t been trained by the same kind of fucking nutcases who mentored Deathmask and the others—as if, somehow, their killing and maiming and fighting left people any less dead at the end of the day.

Even meeting with Crackpot, back in the days, weren’t quite as boring, and he wasn’t exactly the most organized mind—honestly, the only reason any of this is even bearable is the knowledge that Aphrodite, if no one else, hates the fucking waste of time as much as Deathmask does, and he won’t have to be begged into voicing that displeasure.

 

Except this time around, when Deathmask looks up from his customary rant, he finds Aphrodite looking at him like he’s somehow turned into some kind of adorable puppy, and the thought is so fucking bizarre and wrong it cuts Deathmask short. He glares at Aphrodite with all he has, but it's all in vain, and Deathmask has to make a conscious effort to keep his breathing even at the sight.

 

“Sorry,” Aphrodite says, without even the good grace to pretend he means it, “it’s just—I missed this.”

 

He almost goes to say something else but clearly thinks better of it before he opens his mouth, and turns toward the arena, where most of the meetings are held—anything to keep the peasants as far away from anything significant as possible.

Deathmask oddly wrong-footed, curses at empty air and follows suit.

 

(A memory: Deathmask is almost fifteen and it’s just him and the one boy left competing for the Cancer Cloth now. They still need to fight for a bed at night, and Deathmask still wins every night, but he also still knows better than to sleep fully after that. His stomach fills with bile at the sight of that other boy, same as it does at the sight of his master, and the other apprentices and saints in the Sanctuary—all of them except for Aphrodite, who is annoying and pathetic and ridiculous, but not quite as weak as he seems to be and doesn’t sneer at Deathmask the way the others do.

He knows better than to let even himself know about that.)

 

***

 

Stepping in the arena brings conversations to their customary halt, and even the fucking Goat has the gall to look faintly disgusted at the sight of Deathmask and Aphrodite, as if he didn’t stand right there with them in Crackpot’s chambers, didn’t nod and salute whenever he came out of there with new orders to threaten, to torture, to kill—to abduct, to racket, the list goes on and on and on, so far back the specifics stopped mattering a long time ago.

It’s not even like the others haven’t done the same either—they all have. During training for some, after they got their Cloth—they’ve all done it. Their insistence to pretend to contrary is fucking hypocrisy, nothing else.

Deathmask rolls his eyes and ignores the servants’ shivering silhouettes as he follows Aphrodite to their usual spot, as far away from Shion as they can get without mingling with the mortals. Crackpot’s eyes widen when he sees them walk toward him—dart to the side like he’s looking for an exit before his gaze settles on the ground in front of him. Deathmask ignores him and keeps his eyes firmly fixed on Shion and the others who are, as experience proved, less likely to get violent but far more likely to be dangerous if they do.

 

“Thank you, everyone, for your presence,” Shion says, tone acerbic enough to convey his opinion on Deathmask and Aphrodite’s lack of punctuality quite clearly, “the order of the day, as you’ll have guessed—”

“You have to give him this,” Aphrodite mutters on Deathmask’s left, “he’s more efficient than Saga was.”

 

A pause, then his head turns toward Crackpot—just a fraction, but enough to be noticed—and he adds:

 

“You monologued far too much, and it wasn’t always coherent.”

 

Crackpot stares at Aphrodite with half-panicked eyes that, truth be told, don’t look all that different from his face most of the days. Mostly, it makes him look pathetically weak, like the only thing missing is a board on his back reading ‘bully me’ which is really both suicidal and downright embarrassing. At the bottom, Shion glares at them for the disruption—so, Deathmask notices, do the other Saints and a few of the more daring servants.

Even Patchouli, with his closed eyes and his fucking immobile face, manages to convey a decent sense of disapproval, and Deathmask makes sure to direct most of the smugness he feels at the monk until he turns back to Aphrodite and finds him looking uncharacteristically dejected.

 

After that, Deathmask just ignores anything and anyone who isn’t Shion.

 

***

 

Nobody even tries to pretend they’re surprised when the meeting turns out to have been a fucking waste of time—they’re told to go home and go back to their normal schedule, the servants are told to keep everything they’ve seen and heard a secret, which they’re paid obscene amounts of money for already, anyway.

Everybody grunts and groans and nods and almost thanks Shion for this fucking sham—meanwhile, Deathmask thinks of the white stains on his favorite t-shirt from where he helped Aphrodite switch a wall around, then re-plaster and re-paint the entire Pisces temple until it looked more like a home than anything the Sanctuary has ever seen. He thinks of the way Aphrodite may have stopped talking about Shaka but he hasn’t started talking about Patchouli again, and the way he looks toward the Virgo temple sometimes, when he thinks Deathmask isn’t looking.

 

To his left, Patchouli turns his face away rather than ‘meet’ Aphrodite’s gaze, and Deathmask sneers:

 

“Well, someone’s taking that advice to heart.”

“Yes,” Aphrodite says—too late, too low, too soft— “someone is.”

 

Deathmask glares at Patchouli on principle, and doesn’t hide his satisfaction when the monk’s cosmos colors with puzzlement.

 

***

 

One week and two days after the return of the prodigal sons, Deathmask reaches into Aphrodite’s cupboard and, instead of his usual dainty porcelain cup, his fingers meet with a large, green, ceramic monstrosity.

He nearly breaks the door on his way out.

 

***

 

(A memory: Aphrodite is the brand new, just-shy-of-sixteen Pisces Saint. As such, he is now equal in rank and worth to Deathmask’s master, who can no longer forbid his apprentice from visiting “the little rose”. Not that he’s attempted to forbid Deathmask from anything since he found the other apprentice strangled to death a week ago, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Deathmask enters the Pisces temple’s kitchen with a carefully sardonic mask, but he blinks in surprise when Aphrodite gives him an empty white teacup and a couple pots of porcelain paint, making some noise about how ridiculous it would be for him to die just because he was too stupid to check a cup, so he might as well have one of his own.

 

Deathmask paints the skull in a daze, and he’s almost surprised to find the cup’s still there when he visits the second time.)

 

***

 

It’s been two weeks since Aphrodite came back, and he hasn’t spoken with Patchouli even once—not that he’s told Deathmask about it, but he’s always been pathetically easy to read, and even if he hadn’t there’s a new awkwardness between the two Saints that really can’t mean anything else, except maybe for a one night stand gone bad and, well. It’s not Patchouli’s style.

Deathmask should probably say something—tell Aphrodite to go and have a fucking talk with the monk, if only so he can stop dealing with Aphrodite’s random patches of silence, but every time he goes for it he thinks of the green teacup in Aphrodite’s cupboard, and he falls silent.

 

They’re climbing back to the twelfth temple after a visit to Rodorio’s market—Aphrodite insisted he needed some vegetables before Friday’s delivery—and they’re just about to cross the Gemini temple when Crackpot, in civvies, comes out of his apartments, biting his lips and twisting his hands so hard Deathmask’s hands itch to smash him against the wall until he starts fighting back.

He slows down and stops next to Aphrodite anyway, one grocery basket under each arm, and glares at the disturbance without regard for the carefully blank face and cosmos Aphrodite projects beside him.

 

“What do you want?” Deathmask ask, and Crackpot looks to the side—the nearest exit—before he manages:

“I—I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he says, crimson splotches popping up on his face, “for...well, for everything, really.”

 

He looks at the ground again, like some of the Cancer apprentices did when they knew they’d get a beating—those always died first, and Deathmask rolls his eyes at the memory. When he turns toward Aphrodite, though, he finds him frowning at Crackpot’s bowed head.

 

“What do you mean?” Aphrodite asks, and Crackpot stares at him like he’s grown a second head.

 

To be honest, it takes conscious effort for Deathmask not to do the same. Who cares what the guy means? He’s said his piece, probably didn’t even mean it, let him go wash his conscience somewhere else—who does he think they are anyway? His confessors?

 

“Well I—I made you do terrible things,” Crackpot stutters, unaware or uncaring that he’s wasting their time, “like torture people and—”

“Deathmask had to kill his master to get his Cloth,” Aphrodite points out, eyebrows raised, “and I didn’t notice you holding my hand during my assignments.”

 

He turns to Deathmask in an implicit ‘how about you’, and Deathmask just stares at him. Everyone in the Sanctuary knows he caught more punishments—beatings, food deprivation, and a few more creative instances—for insubordination than all the other apprentice combined. If he’d truly wanted to disobey Crackpot’s orders he would have, but then what would have been the point? At least, being a hitman meant he didn’t have to be stuck with the Golden Pricks quite as much. And hey, faced with the same choice today? He’d take the multiple outings again, no contest.

 

“But,” Crackpot continues, grasping at the shred of what must have been a carefully constructed apology speech, “I—”

“I mean, you were a raving maniac,” Aphrodite cuts off with a shrug, “nobody’s denying that, and it’s not like you’re entirely blameless or anything. It’s just kind of old news, and we didn’t exactly rebel against you either.”

“...but why didn’t you?”

“No point,” Deathmask sighs, wondering how Crackpot hasn’t figured that out yet. “Best case scenario, you’d have sent the Goat to kill us—obeying was more profitable.”

 

Worst case scenario, Deathmask and Aphrodite would have been sent to kill each other. Deathmask isn’t sure how it would have ended, but he doesn’t particularly want to find out, either.

 

“You know what you leave,” Aphrodite approves with a bitter smirk, “you never know what you’ll find.”

“Plus we’ve been assholes for far longer than you’ve been bonkers.”

 

From the corner of his eyes, Deathmask sees Aphrodite roll his eyes—he mutters something about circumstances and Hell, maybe he’s right. Maybe they really would be different persons if they’d had different masters and maybe they’d have had different masters if the Sanctuary was a different place and maybe the Sanctuary would be a different place if the people who mentored their masters’ masters—and back and back to the beginning of the Saints—had made different decisions, but what good does it do to dwell on that? It doesn’t make anything different and they’re still stuck in the same shitty fucking place unless they rewrite the universe itself, and while Deathmask isn’t afraid to try, he’s never been the kind to fight for a lost cause.

Might as well accept that he’s been dealt a shitty hand and make the best of it.

Besides, that’s Aphrodite’s thing—he’s always cared about the hows and whys of things. Deathmask is an asshole and a murderer, he knows it. The first might change yet, supposing some kind of miracle happens and he meets people who aren’t complete pains in his fucking ass. Nothing to be done about the second though. Even when someone with godly power decides to resurrect (some of) your victims, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve killed them in the first place.

 

“If anything,” Aphrodite shrugs in the end, jostling Deathmask out of his own thoughts, “you’ve seen what life is like here. Anyone in their right mind would jump at the chance to get out, even if the price is high.”

“You’re the only ones who did that though,” Crackpot points out with a confused frown, “no one else agreed.”

“Now,” Aphrodite says with a bitter grin, "isn’t that a scary thought?”

 

Deathmask snorts as Crackpot’s eyes shine with something that might yet turn into tears.

It’s the same ugly laughter he’s always had, and this time not even Aphrodite scolds him for it. How do you scold a dude for being aware of how fucked up his life is? Sure, Deathmask took to the whole shebang like a fish in water, that doesn’t change that he’s stuck in a place he hates, with people he fucking hates—for the most part—and who hate him right back—again, one exception—with no salary, no knowledge of the outside world, and no real possibility to leave the life unless it’s in a coffin and honestly, he’s been there and done that already.

Psycho or not, even he can tell he’s gotten the short end of the destiny stick.

 

“Yeah,” Crackpot agrees with a shiver in his voice, “I guess it is.”

 

Deathmask is annoyed but not surprised when Aphrodite, big ridiculous softy that he is, goes as far as inviting Crackpot over for tea. He makes some noise about wanting to go home, leaves them to finish the climb up to Aphrodite’s temple without him, and doesn’t let himself dwell on the thought of a green teacup in the wrong cupboard.

 

***

 

Silence falls on the arena when Deathmask and Aphrodite enter it at training time three days later, the atmosphere of distrust so thick it’s almost palpable. Sure, the Goat’s hypocritical brand of disdain is a new addition, but Deathmask takes satisfaction in the knowledge that, at least, Shura can’t fully join the other side. As for the rest of the bunch, there’s nothing new there, really, and while Deathmask is surprised to see Patchouli decided to grace the field with his holier-than-thou presence, that doesn’t prevent him from giving them all his widest grin as he follows Aphrodite to their usual spot, where Crackpot is apparently trying to decide if he should leave or not.

(Deathmask wants him to, but Aphrodite doesn’t chase the guy so he sighs, glares at the Gemini Saint, and starts stretching.)

 

“So,” Manicure asks sometime later, too loud for it not to be intentional, “Diner and poker at my place tonight?”

 

Even Patchouli nods to that and, when Deathmask sees him turn a little red around the ears, he’s not surprised to find Aphrodite staring at the monk like his life depends on it.

 

It’s stupid but not quite as pathetic as the way Deathmask’s mockery catches in his throat and refuses to come out.

 

***

 

“So he’s a fucking hypocrite,” Deathmask tells Aphrodite when they’re back in the twelfth temple that afternoon, sore and bruised but in better shape, “big fucking deal. It’s not like the others are any different.”

 

Well, alright, Crackpot—ironically enough—doesn’t seem quite as double-faced as the rest of their colleagues. He’s a fucking wimp, that’s for sure, and he probably owes it to his crazy to have survived that long in their world, but still, so far he hasn’t exactly shown off any misplaced smugness. And, Deathmask allows because he’s half-drunk already and in a generous mood, the Bronze Saint with a pink armor—how does Aphrodite call him again? Queenie? No, wait. Princess. Yeah, that’s the name. Yeah, Princess doesn’t seem to be too hung up on the assassin part of things for now—though considering he’s been Hades meatsuit, which implies pure goodness and therefore insane levels of stupidity, maybe he just doesn’t get it yet.

Still, probably not a hypocrite. Doesn’t mean Aphrodite should be surprised Patchouli turned out to be one.

 

“I didn’t think the others were my friends,” the Pisces Saint mutters anyway, eyes looking at a page of his homemade cookbook without actually reading it, “I thought—ha. Never mind.”

 

That’s probably the smartest thing Aphrodite has said all night—never mind. Never mind what naïve thoughts he had and never mind the other Saints and never mind the world because cursing or worrying at it ain’t gonna change it, no matter what. Might as well let things get back to normal.

Except, of course, it’s too late for that. Aphrodite’s temple, for one, is far too different now—although there are still herbs hanging all over the kitchen ceiling—and even if it weren’t, the fact remains that Aphrodite, for all that he said he’d move on, is still staring at the same page and doesn’t look any closer to actually reading what’s written on it.

No way Deathmask is getting fed now.

 

(A memory: Deathmask is sixteen-and-some-days, newly appointed as Cancer Saint, and he’s sitting outside his temple at ungodly hours of the night, his master’s laughter pursuing him from the bottom of the freshly dug grave. He’s taking deep breaths and trying to curse his fucking stupid heart into a normal fucking rhythm when Aphrodite walks down to his spot, barefooted and in his pajamas.

 

“Trouble sleeping?” He asks, and Deathmask glares, offended.

“No,” he says, “I’m meditating.”

“Okay.”

 

Aphrodite sits on the ground next to him, dirt marring his satiny bottoms, and doesn’t move until Deathmask does.)

 

“Nah,” Deathmask tells Aphrodite, keeping his cosmos closely guarded, “you’ll be a pain until you’ve thought it through. Spit it out so you can get back to cooking. I’m starving.”

 

Aphrodite snorts, but he does turn away from the book to prop his hip against the kitchen counter and cross his arms over his chest. One of his hand sneaks up to tug at his—still short, still naturally blond—hair, and he’s looking through Deathmask rather than at him when he says:

 

“I don’t want things to go back to normal.”

 

He’s thought about this already—probably has been thinking about it since before he came back to the Sanctuary—and Deathmask hates the way the idea makes his fingers dig in the flesh of his thighs under the table.

If Aphrodite sees it, at least he has the good sense not to mention it, continuing instead:

 

“I mean, aside from everything wrong with the whole Saint thing in general, normal means we’re stuck in a place where everybody hates our guts for no good reason and will keep doing so for the rest of our lives. At this point the best thing that could happen to us if we keep going this way will be a new Holy War so we can at least feel like we’ve trained for something before we die horribly again...I don’t want to go back to that.”

 

Deathmask digs harder into his thighs, but says nothing.

This conversation, he knows, has been looming over them for years—ever since Anchise first sneaked into the Pisces temple and berated Aphrodite for his lack of survival instinct and stupid little Aphrodite replied ‘there’s more to life than living’. It’s been building up and up and up with every sneer, every glare, every abrupt silence thrown their way—took a giant leap forward after they were resurrected and nothing really changed despite everyone’s assurance to the contrary. Anchise has always known this day would happen and Deathmask is a fool for forgetting it, and so he digs into his fingernails into his jeans until he feels like he’s going to draw blood, and he pretends he doesn’t know what’s going on as he asks:

 

“So what are you going to do? Leave?”

 

Aphrodite’s snort aims for derisive, but it comes out sounding more bitter than anything else.

 

“I’ve been there and done that, and I came back, didn’t I? The outside world has a couple of great things, but it doesn’t like men like me.”

“They hate hired murderers here too,” Deathmask points out even as he leans forward in his chair, baited breath coming out of him with the same staccato rhythm as his heartbeat.

“I meant the ones who like men,” Aphrodite sighs, but there’s no bite to it.

 

He pulls his red t-shirt up, until his stomach is bared and an angry red, puckered scar stares Deathmask in the face, presses at the edge of his chest until he wants to curse and hit something—anything, anyone will do, really. Bile rises in his throat, but he doesn’t move.

 

“There are places for us—for men like me—just about everywhere you can think of. It’s just that it can be dangerous to be seen around them. This one,” he finishes, releasing his shirt, “was from a screwdriver in San Francisco. I have one from a broken bottle in Russia, and a couple guys tried to emasculate me once. They’d have done it, too, if Shaka hadn’t found me. Here, as least, I’ve got my cosmos and my roses to protect me should the others have a negative opinion on all of this.”

 

Deathmask nods. He’s felt the way Aphrodite’s cosmos seemed to recede when they visited Rodorio less than a week ago, like a piece of cloth stuffed into a too-small box. He hates the way it made him pause—keep half of his mind focused of Aphrodite as they made their way back. He hates the way he stays awake at night sometimes, when Aphrodite vanishes from his awareness, and doesn’t fall back to sleep until the other Saint is safely back within the limits of the Sanctuary.

He hasn’t talked about it though, and neither has Aphrodite. It’s just as well.

 

“So, you’re staying then?” He asks, and hates the way his hands unclench when Aphrodite nods, bittersweet smile twisting at his lips.

“Like I said, I’m better off here. And besides, I’m not leaving you behind.”

 

Deathmask hears something crack, loud and harsh in the kitchen, and it takes him far too long to realize he’s clutched the table so hard he broke the wood, splinters poking bloody holes into his hands. He looks away, trying to find something to focus on that isn’t Aphrodite, tries hard not to think of the graveyard in his back garden, where he buried all the other Cancer apprentices—where he can still hear his master’s laughter coming from the ground ten years after he put him there.

 

“You’re my best friend, Anchise,” Aphrodite says, blessedly matter-of-fact, “of course I’m not leaving you behind.”

 

Aphrodite doesn’t have a friend—just a guy who’s too weak to severe the connection for good—but the words catch in Deathmask’s throat, thick as a stone, and he finds himself staring down at his bloodied fingers like he’s never seen them before until Aphrodite brushes the moment aside—like he was talking about something as unimportant as the weather—with:

 

“I’m tired of the others hating us though. I’m staying here, but I don’t want things to stay the same as they’ve always been.”

“Well,” Deathmask manages—too low, too thin, too slow— “they’re not changing their mind anytime soon.”

“Not if we don’t do anything for it,” Aphrodite agrees with a thoughtful frown. “But there must be a solution.”

“Don’t include me, nothing I’m good at is going to help deal with them, unless you want them dead.”

 

Aphrodite almost—almost—depletes, face sagging from determination to incertitude, but he takes a look around his tiny kitchen and stops short at the sight of his cookbook, lying abandoned on the counter. Deathmask sees his eyes widen with the beginning of a plan before his features harden into determination again.

 

“So,” Deathmask asks again, voice not quite back to normal, “what are you going to do?”

“First,” Aphrodite says as he leafs through his stash of recipe, “I’m going to bake a cake.”

 

***

 

The Scorpio temple is already bustling with activity by the time they walk in, Aphrodite carrying a black tea cake while Deathmask carefully balances a lemon cake in one hand and an olive cake in the other, swearing at Aphrodite’s tendency to go overboard and hating the way olive cake can make him agree to so many things.

(This is a terrible idea, he knows, but he said yes already and there’s no backing out now unless he wants to sound like a weakling—it’s better not to think too much about why he said yes exactly.)

Laughter filters through the door to Manicure’s apartments, glasses clinking together and the cloying scent of tobacco slugging its way into the corridor through the crack under the door. All of it, unsurprisingly, comes to a grinding halt when Aphrodite knocks. There’s a tens silence—whispers as the assholes try to figure out who, between the Goat, Deathmask, Crackpot and Aphrodite is presently trying to disturb their fun.

 

It’s the Bull that ends up opening the door, presumably because his bulk blocks most of the room from Aphrodite and Deathmask’s view. He frowns as he sees them, goes to close the door only to freeze when he notices the cakes.

 

“There’s black tea, lemon cake, and olive,” Aphrodite says before Bull can ask, “and Death agreed to eat some of all three so you can see I’m not trying to poison you.”

“Who’s to say you didn’t just give him a counter-poison?” Manicure tosses from the inside, words slurring around what must be some kind of cigar.

“First of all,” Aphrodite replies without missing a beat with the offended tone of a professional asked a truly ridiculous question by a neophyte, “it would be a waste of resources. Poisoning your soaps or your cigars would be far more efficient. Secondly, I wouldn’t poison Deahtmask...just ask Shaka, he’ll confirm.”

 

Silence falls over the room—the thick, awkward kind that happens when you wait for a doom you can’t avoid—and then Iceberg’s voice says:

 

“He doesn’t seem all that convinced.”

“To put it mildly.”

 

Deathmask’s fingers tighten into fists at the smug tone, and he’s about to punch the Bull out of the way when Aphrodite manages to un-stick his lips and says:

 

“Shaka, don’t be stupid. Tell them to let us in, we’ll behave. I made your favorite.”

 

Silence surrounds them again, the Bull’s eyebrows raising in amusement as someone inside snickers—there’s a chuckle, and before long the Golden Assholes are laughing in earnest. Deathmask wants to find out who laughed first—bash his face against the wall until he begs for forgiveness, but he can’t quite take his eyes off the way Aphrodite goes deathly pale then crimson red in mere seconds—and shoves the black tea cake in the Bull’s hands.

(The guy catches it, too, too surprised to do anything else, and it should be satisfying but it isn’t.)

 

“You tell Shaka I hope he chokes on it,” Aphrodite grits out, and then he strides out of the temple and toward Deathmask’s house.

 

They’ve barely come out of the place—Deathmask still has the fucking cakes in hand—when Crackpot steps out of the shadow, not even bothering to pretend he hasn’t heard everything. Behind them, the thick walls swallow the others’ laughter, but it still rings in Deathmask’s ears as Crackpot gives a weak—far too shy—smile and says:

 

“I know it’s not as good as being with them, but I—I got some of my old bottles back from the palace. If—you know. You want to share.”

 

Aphrodite throws one last, disgusted—hurt—look at the temple, visibly steels himself—fuck, Deathmask really needs to beat some sense into him about that—and nods.

 

“I suppose we might as well. What do you think?”

 

Deathmask shrugs, unconcerned.

 

“So long as the drinking isn’t what made you crazy.”

 

He ignores the way his stomach protests—two nights of drinking in a row may be too much for an ordinary man but he’s a fucking Gold Saint and he’ll get hammered if he damn well pleases, twisting guts or no.

 

He hasn’t seen Aphrodite so drunk he needed to crash at the Cancer temple in years.

 

***

 

“Two hundred years,” Aphrodite mutters—almost whines, really—while he waits for Deathmask to unlock his door some time after three in the morning, “two hundred sodding years and it’s like nothing’s fucking changed.”

 

Deathmask is entirely too drunk for this—will never be sober enough for this—but he stops fumbling with keys he doesn’t really need all the same, and tries to focus on the bitter, dejected expression etched into Aphrodite’s features.

 

“I don’t know,” he says, mouth slipping into a slight slur, “Saga sounds less boring than before.”

 

It takes a while, but Aphrodite manages to loosen up and smile a little before he goes to sleep in one of the old apprentices cell.

Deathmask makes sure Patchouli doesn’t get a full night of sleep for the next three weeks.

 

***

 

(A memory: Anchise is ten, several fist-sized bruises blooming on his skin on top of the ugly, oozing mess of a bite mark on his shoulder. He’s just started emptying the dry toilets behind the arena—his punishment for sneaking into the wrong temple yesterday—when a shadow falls over him. Looking up, he narrows his left eye against the sun—the right one is obscured by the puffiness of his cheek—and recognizes the Pisces apprentice, whose right cheek looks about as absurdly enormous as Anchise’s feels.

 

“I’m Aphrodite,” the boy says in an even, almost friendly tone, and Anchise is too surprised to do anything but answer:

 

“Anchise.”

 

Aphrodite smiles—wide and spontaneous in a way no one else is around here—and gets to work.)

 


End file.
